“Damnit say something!” Matt yelled, hating the way his voice cracked.
“What would you have me say?” Cutter asked quietly, in a voice that was far more terrifying than it would have been if he’d raised it in anger. “You’re not a fighter, boy, that’s all. Sure, I could teach you enough that you probably wouldn’t stab yourself, but even if I wanted to—and I don’t—we don’t have the time. You’re not a killer, that’s all. There’s nothing to be ashamed about—most people aren’t.”
“You don’t know what I am or where I come from!” Matt shouted. “No one does. Not even—"
Suddenly, Cutter spun to look into the distance from where they’d come.
“What? What i—”
“Quiet,” the man growled, holding up his hand for silence.
“Don’t tell me to be silent,” Matt said, not ready to let it go, “not after—”
“Shut your fucking mouth, boy,” the big man growled, and Matt did, his jaw snapping shut. “Shut up and listen.”
Matt did, but he could hear nothing. “What is it? I don’t—”
But Matt forgot what he’d been about to say as suddenly the blinding snow that had continued since they’d set off that morning stopped as if it had never been. Matt had lived his entire life in the frigid temperatures in and around Brighton, and he had never before seen a snowstorm stop so abruptly and so completely. One moment, the air was covered in thick flakes, so many that you could barely see in front of your face. The next, the snow was gone, and there was no noise at all, only a deathly silence that, for reasons he could not explain, made the hairs on the back of his next stand up.
“We’re here.”
Suddenly Cutter turned and started off in the direction they’d been traveling. Matt followed his gaze then froze, his breath catching in his throat. He had been able to see nothing during the blizzard, nothing at all except the falling snow. Only moments ago, he had despaired that he would ever see anything else, had wished to finally reach the Black Woods as they, however bad they were, could never approach the terribleness of the featureless white landscape. But gods, how he had been wrong.
The woods lay in front of them, no more than thirty feet away, and even with the snow that had been falling, Matt could not imagine how they’d gotten so close without him seeing any sign of them, would have bet any amount of coin that the woods were still a great distance away, out of sight. But there they were, close, and he felt as if someone—or something—had been creeping up on him, felt that same feeling that sometimes overcame a man, that he was being watched, even though he knew there was no one else in the room with him.
Somehow, though he knew he stared at the woods, he found it difficult, despite the closeness, to make out individual trees. Instead, what he saw was a terrible black smear across the landscape, as if an artist, having completed his work and found himself displeased, dipped his thumb into the black paint and dragged it angrily across the canvas.
“Fire and salt,” he breathed, “it’s…it’s terrible.”
Cutter followed his gaze, staring at the woods the way a man might gaze upon a familiar—and unliked—visitor suddenly arriving on his doorstep. “Yes. The Woods have always been an important place to the Fey, a sacred place. They are the heart of their power. It is the only reason, many believe, why they signed the treaty in the first place, sacrificing so much of their lands to at least preserve the Black Woods. Though, of course, they do not call it that. That is a name we chose for it.”
“You sound as if you think they’re the good guys,” Matt said, frowning. “But I’ve heard the stories, the things the Fey do. They’re evil.”
Cutter shrugged. “Perhaps. But then all things act according to their nature, even men. The Fey would not think of themselves as evil just as men do not—they are simply different than we are. As different from us as we are from the trees or the rocks. And know this—it was not the Fey who destroyed Brighton. It was men.”
Matt snarled. He was angry, angry at his fake mother and fake father, at this man who had sold him as if he were just some commodity to be gotten rid of at a good price. “If you love them so much, why don’t you go and live with them?”
Cutter spun on him quickly, a hard, cold look in his gaze, and Matt thought that he had gone too far after all, that the man would soon wrap those massive hands around his throat and choke the life out of him. Instead, he slowly turned back to stare at the Black Woods, at that dark smear across the landscape, and shook his head in what might have almost been sadness. “I would not be welcome.”
“Why?” Matt said, his curiosity getting the better of his anger, at least for the moment. “What did you do?”
The man was silent for a time and Matt was just beginning to think he wasn’t going to answer when he finally spoke. “What all beasts do,” he said in a voice barely loud enough to hear. “I acted according to my nature. Now, let’s go—there is another storm coming. A bad one.”
Matt frowned up at the sky. He had lived in Brighton all his life and knew well the signs of a storm, had been taught from an early age, for more than one person—child and adult—had been lost to the storms over his lifetime, their bodies often found only a short distance away from the village, yet in the blinding snow they had been unable to make their way back to safety. None of those signs were present now. “I don’t see any sign. How do
